Vernon Burlison Memorial Fund Impacts Diversity Human and social justice issues — diversity, empowerment, access to education, peace — matter to John Burlison ’76, just as they mattered to his late father, Vernon ’43. John established the Vernon Burlison Memorial Fund in 1997 in memory of his father, a professor emeritus in the College of Natural Resources. The fund offers scholarship and educational programming support for human and social justice issues, as well as underrepresented communities at the University of Idaho. “These resources are dedicated to making a difference in education and broaden understanding by bringing diverse and controversial ideas to the campus community,” said John Burlison. In addition to more than doubling his annual contribution, John also gave a generous current use gift this year — significantly increasing his giving for key resources in the name of his father. “John’s vision and support make a permanent difference for the LGBTQA community,” said Julia Keleher, director of the LGBTQA Office. For more information on supporting diversity at the University of Idaho, contact Jim Zuba at 208-885-4142 or jzuba@uidaho.edu. | | | TedxUIdaho Returns to UI Campus The University of Idaho’s student-led TEDx event will tackle the idea of “What’s NeXt?” for society at its third annual event, 1-5 p.m. Saturday, May 6, in UI’s Hartung Theater. The event features 11 speakers, including UI graduate and undergraduate students and faculty members. The talks will delve into topics including research on making better robots and video games, fascinating organic molecules in 3-D motion, and how we can build better and more responsive computers with artificial intelligence. Other topics include a 14-year-old’s opinion on the importance of societal labels, why failure is desirable for success from a highly competitive soccer coach, and a dissection of the age-old debate between religion and science. Tickets, which are $10 for students and $25 for the general public, are now on sale at tedxuidaho.com. More information about speakers will be posted online at https://www.facebook.com/uidahotedx. | | | UI Research: Individual Glacier Shapes Influence Greenland Ice Loss Thinning glaciers in Greenland play a major role in rising sea levels around the globe. An international team of researchers, including Tim Bartholomaus, an assistant professor of geography in the UI College of Science, have found that the glaciers’ shapes influence how quickly they thin and melt — allowing them to identify which glaciers are most likely to contribute to sea level rise. The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second-largest ice sheet on Earth and has been losing mass for decades, a trend scientists have linked to a warming climate. However, the mass change experienced by individual coastal glaciers, which flow out from the ice sheet and into the ocean, is highly variable. This makes predicting the ice sheet’s impact on future sea-level rise difficult. “The approach we demonstrate here allows us to identify which outlet glaciers are not yet changing rapidly, but might,” Bartholomaus said. “With that knowledge, we can anticipate potential sea-level rise and set up the observational campaigns in advance to understand these glacier changes.” This new knowledge of glacier melt also will help scientists refine the models used to predict sea-level rise. | | | | | |